CAPTAIN "MAC."

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3021, 7 March 1917, Page 6

CAPTAIN "MAC."

A FIGHTING SALVATIONIST. "Captain Mac" is the brief title by which Chaplain-Captain M'Kenzie, who went away from Australia with the first of the Commonwealth's Forces, is known to the troops within a mile of wherever ho is. In a vivid character sketch of the man, Mr. Harold Begbie, in "Lloyd's Weekly," says:

This Captain Mac is a big, solid person, with a brown Australian skin, black hair, black eyes, a black iiioustache, and a voice that would fill the Crystal Palace. His eyes shine and burn and twinkle with an animation so excessive that you cannot imagine how he doesn't explode, or how ho manages to sit still for two minutes together. And his smile is of the kind that makes everybody else smile, and 'that gives energy fc> the feeblest, and bestows good spirits on the saddest. A great, big, hearty man, overflowing with the joy of existence, bursting with energy, and longing, always longing, for a fight.

• "We go out to meet the chaps coming back from tho fighting line," says Captain M'Kenzie. "and give them a song home. We sing to them, play to them. . . . What makes me so Tiappy? Well, being a servant to the greatest fellows on tho earth, being al!ow r ed to do something for them. I've dure I can't tell you how many graves; I've read the burial service over English and Australians; I've had shells tearing up the bodies I've buried onlv a minute ago; and I've seen men blinded, mutilated, ruined for life—but T can't lose heart. I can't be miserable, I can't be sad. There's something here"—tho gallant fellow placed a great brown hand over his heart—"that makes me feel sure, absolutely sure, that Gnd is working to make His Heaven out of our hell." Contain Mae, I am very certain, will die fightinc. if not in Franco, then tho Devil in Melbourne or Bydney.